In Memoriam 2002

by Bob Mastrangelo | Published February 4, 2003

Dirty Harry (1971); High Noon (1952); Rosemary’s Baby (1968); Ninotchka (1939); and Alice in Wonderland are all indebted to the unsung heroes of 2002.

Last winter in this column we told readers we believed it was important to celebrate some of the unique but unheralded talents lost in the preceding 12 months. We’re doing it again—and once again this survey is not meant to be a comprehensive list, but rather a small tribute to a few of the gifted film artists whose passing in 2002 received little attention from the U.S. media. Even here, space constraints make it impossible to profile all who deserve to be covered, so what we have instead is a personal selection of moviemakers whose work we particularly enjoyed over the years.—MM

For the actor James Gregory, 90, if steady stage and TV work kept him from having as prolific a film career as he deserved, he still delivered some knockout big screen performances. Most famously, he portrayed the title role in The Manchurian Candidate, John Frankenheimer’s scathing tale of political assassination. As the manipulated, self-aggrandizing Senator Iselin, Gregory created a character that is a devastating hybrid of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon (his physical resemblance to Nixon is quite eerie). A vastly different role was his portrayal of the militaristic gorilla General Ursus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. By exaggerating his trademark swagger and inimitable voice, Gregory parodied his own screen persona and seemed to thoroughly enjoy doing so, spewing out campy lines like “The only good human is a dead human!”

The director William Witney, 86, spent his long and prolific career making cliffhangers, serials and B movies that showcased such Saturday matinee idols as the Lone Ranger, Zorro and Dick Tracy. In the process, he developed a significant cult following. Two fine—and very different—examples of his work are The Golden Stallion and The Bonnie Parker Story. The Golden Stallion has been recognized as one of the best Roy Rogers movies, a plucky little oater in which Roy, Dale and Trigger do battle with diamond smugglers operating on the US-Mexico border. The Bonnie Parker Story tells the Bonnie and Clyde legend entirely from Bonnie’s perspective. It’s pulp moviemaking at its best, with a sensational plot, plenty of violence and action, flashy visuals, a surprisingly semi-feminist slant and, of course, the occasional gratuitous shot of Bonnie half-dressed. Both films display Witney’s ability to make the most out of an ultra-low budget and short running time with an abundance of style.

The actress Hildegard Knef, 76, was a major figure in German cinema in the years after World War II. At the height of her popularity, she generated a storm of controversy by briefly appearing nude in the extremely melodramatic The Sinner. Unquestionably, her most important film was 1946’s The Murderers Are Among Us, the first German film to address the war and German responsibility. Partially filmed amid the rubble of bombed-out Berlin, it is one of the essential films of the post-World War II period, and Knef delivers a raw performance as a concentration camp survivor trying to rebuild her life.

Sihung Lung, 72, was already one of Taiwan’s leading actors when he was coaxed out of retirement by director Ang Lee to star in Lee’s trilogy on family life, Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman. Together, the three films examine the intricacies of familial relationships, blending humor with a refreshing lack of sentimentality. It was in the third installment that Lung got his juiciest part, as the widowed chef Chu who must cope with his three adult daughters. His calm and remarkably subtle performance anchors the film, making it the strongest of the series. Lung was utilized by Lee one last time, playing the elder Sir Te in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Gene Ruggiero, 91, opted for a career in film editing over his initial choice of pro golfer. The result was more than 30 years at MGM and a final filmography stuffed with classics. Early in his career he edited two of Ernst Lubitsch’s more charming efforts, Ninotchka and The Shop Around the Corner. In the 1950s he worked on some of the studio’s biggest productions, winning an Oscar for Around the World in Eighty Days. But it was for Oklahoma that he did some of his best editing, working in perfect sync with the rhythm of the Rodgers and Hammerstein score and Agnes de Mille’s choreography, particularly during the extended ballet dream sequence that is the highlight of the film.

Maria Felix, 88, was probably the most popular movie star in Mexico’s history and one of the icons from that country’s golden age of moviemaking. But because her films never received wide release in America, her name is little known beyond Spanish-speaking communities. One of her biggest successes was Enamorada, a highly entertaining romantic comedy in which her passionate and indomitable personality was on full display as Beatriz, the fiery daughter of a local businessman.

Harry Gerstad, 93, also spent several decades as a top Hollywood film editor. He won his first Oscar for his work on Champion, a bleak look at boxing that used Gerstad’s montage sequences to chronicle the lead character’s rise in the corrupt boxing world. The training montage in particular was so successful that to this day training sequences are a mainstay for boxing pictures. His second Oscar came when he teamed with Elmo Williams on High Noon, one of the most celebrated editing efforts in film history. The film’s story famously unfolded in real time, an astonishing feat for its era, and one which moviemakers even today continue to attempt.

Yet another veteran of Mexican cinema was the actor Roberto Cobo, 72. He worked steadily in films for over 50 years, but made his biggest mark early on with Buñuel’s Los Olvidados. Still the screen’s final word on the desperate and violent lives of unwanted street youths, the film is made all the more unforgettable by Cobo’s riveting performance as the ruthless El Jaibo, a teenaged gang leader whose brutality still shocks modern audiences.

Bill Peet, 87, was not part of Disney’s anointed nine, but his achievements in animation were no less impressive. He was considered a story man par excellence, making key contributions as both animator and writer to Dumbo, Song of the South, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. He also wrote Disney’s first real screenplay for an animated feature for 101 Dalmatians. Peet’s considerable storytelling skills, coupled with his notorious love-hate relationship with old Walt (he once said he had Disney in mind when drawing Captain Hook for Peter Pan), made him a colorful and insightful chronicler of that studio’s golden age.

Ward Kimball, 88, was a member of the Nine Old Men, that fabled group of Disney’s most trusted animators. Kimball brought to life such characters as Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, the crows who give Dumbo the confidence to fly, Lucifer the cat in Cinderella and several characters in Alice in Wonderland. He was often assigned the more difficult animation tasks, most notably the Mad Tea Party sequence in Alice in Wonderland and, most famously, the frenzied climactic performance of the title tune for The Three Caballeros. Sometimes cited as among the most individual of the Disney animators, Kimball, who possessed an almost anarchic visual style, went on to direct—and win Oscars for—two of the more distinctive and stylized Disney shorts, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom and It’s Tough to Be a Bird.

Richard Sylbert, 73, was unquestionably one of the most influential production designers of his generation. The sophistication, innovation and practicality of his sets put him in high demand with directors ranging from Kazan to Polanski. Sylbert’s designs are inseparable from the overall impact of The Graduate, Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby and many others, creating an obscenely long list of essential American films from the past 40 years. Even some of the lesser films on which he worked, such as The Cotton Club and Dick Tracy, remain impressive today for their visual brilliance rather than their overall quality.

Dean Riesner, 83, surely had one of the oddest of film careers. Under the screen name Dinky Dean he acted in silent films, notably as the child who terrorizes Charlie Chaplin in 1923’s The Pilgrim. Later he directed and co-wrote Bill and Coo, a 1948 film about the troubles of two birds that proved so popular it was awarded a special Oscar. It was in middle age, however, that Riesner made his most enduring contribution to American culture. As a writer of Coogan’s Bluff, Play Misty for Me, Dirty Harry and The Enforcer (and an uncredited script doctor on several other Clint Eastwood films), Riesner helped define the Eastwood screen image. Industry legend has it that it was Riesner who wrote the classic line, “Go ahead, make my day.”

Katy Jurado, 78, the sultry, sleepy-eyed star of Mexican cinema, also found some notoriety in Hollywood, most prominently as Gary Cooper’s former lover in High Noon, and for her Oscar-nominated performance in Broken Lance. One of her greatest roles came in Luis Buñuel’s noirish melodrama El Bruto, in which she plays the temptress Paloma. Jurado’s electrifying, sexually-charged performance marks her as a femme fatale of the first rank, and in her most memorable scene she helps her frail, aged father-in-law sneak a drink by dipping her finger into a glass of tequila and then putting her finger into his mouth. As he continually requests more, she asks him whether he is enjoying the tequila or her finger and he enthusiastically exclaims, “Both!”

Queenie Leonard, 96, was part of that rare breed of scene-stealers who built substantial film careers almost entirely through bit parts—often without a screen credit. She was normally onscreen for only a moment or two, but her appearances were little gems, finely etched characterizations that remained with the film long after she left it. Leonard popped up in almost any genre, from the sophisticated Ernst Lubitsch comedy Cluny Brown to Disney family fare like Mary Poppins. Her more memorable roles included getting bumped off in the Agatha Christie mystery And Then There Were None and being one of Jack the Ripper’s victims in the 1944 remake of The Lodger.

Jeff Corey, 88, was another of those ubiquitous character actors who seemed to be in far more films than was actually the case. Recognizable by his improbably bushy eyebrows, statesmanlike voice and imposing presence, Corey was getting progressively larger parts when his career was halted during the Hollywood blacklist. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he eventually recovered and worked steadily into his eighties. He had standout roles in In Cold Blood, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and True Grit, and gave a memorable portrait of Wild Bill Hickok in Little Big Man.

It seems fitting to wrap this up by marking the passing of special effects expert Glen Robinson, 87. Like the majority of production artists, Robinson worked in obscurity, making it difficult to accurately assess his contributions to moviemaking. During his more than 30 years at MGM, he worked on countless films, almost always without screen credit, so even compiling a reliable list of his credits is probably impossible at this point. When he turned freelance in the early 1970s, Robinson finally received some recognition within the industry, pulling off the considerable feat of winning four effects Oscars in just three years: for Earthquake (1974), The Hindenburg (’75), King Kong and Logan’s Run in (both in ’76). MM

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